The Venus Throw by Steven Saylor

away.
    The killer or killers escaped unseen.
    It was a wretched end to a distinguished life. That Dio foresaw his destruction and spent his final days in a city far from home, dreading every shadow, casts an even gloomier pall over his fate. That he came to me, asking for my help on the very day of his murder, fills me with agitation. Could I have prevented the deed? Almost certainly not, I tell myself, for the men who wished to see Dio dead have resources far beyond anything I could forestall. Yet it seems a cruel jest of the gods to have brought him back into my life after so many years and then to have snatched him away so violently. I have seen much carnage and suffering in my life, yet it never becomes easier to bear. It only becomes harder for me to fathom.
    Now every member of the embassy which arrived last fall from Alexandria has been murdered or has fled back to Egypt or has otherwise vanished from sight. (The few still in Rome, I am told, have either pledged their allegiance to King Ptolemy or been bribed to keep silent; no doubt some or all of them were the king’s spies from the beginning.) The people of Rome should be ashamed that such an atrocity could occur not just in Italy but in the very heart of the city itself. To be sure, there are those who say that Dio’s murder is such an outrage that the Senate will be shamed into taking some action to punish his slayers (if not King Ptolemy, then at least his henchmen). The Senate may even move to repudiate the king and recognize Queen Berenice, which was the object of Dio’s mission. While he lived, the Senate would not even allow him to officially address them, but in deathDio may yet achieve what he desired: an Egypt with a new, independent ruler.
    Can justice follow upon a tragedy such as Dio’s murder? Considering the state of Rome’s courts and the persons whose interests are at stake, I strongly doubt it. But I refuse to brood overmuch concerning this matter. Had I accepted Dio’s commission to expose his enemies, I might now feel some obligation to pursue the matter of bringing his killers to justice. Fortunately, my rejection of his commission was explicit. I told him that I could not help him and gave him a good reason. My conscience is clear. The task of finding the blade which drew Dio’s lifeblood, and punishing the hand that wielded it, does not fall to me.
    Whatever happens next, it will not involve me, and for that I am glad.
    Rereading that letter now, I see that my statements regarding the circumstances of Dio’s death are marred by a number of errors, some of them quite significant. But no statement was more in error than the final one, which I read now with a shudder of amazement. How could I have been so blithely, smugly unforeseeing? What a perilous world we move through, like men blindfolded. The past and future are equally obscure, and broad daylight can hide as many dangers as the landscape of the night.

PART
TWO
NOXIA

chapter
Eight
    A lmost a month passed before I had occasion to write to Meto again.
    To my beloved son Meto, serving under the command of Gaius Julius Caesar in Gaul, from his loving father in Rome, may Fortune be with you.
    I write this letter on the twenty-ninth day of Martius, an uncommonly warm day for so early in the spring—we have thrown open all the windows and the afternoon sunshine is hot on my shoulders. I wish you were here beside me.
    Alas, you are not. Nor are you safely at ease in Illyria, where I last saw you. I learned in the Forum of your sudden move to Gaul not long after my visit. They say that Caesar was called to put down a revolt by some tribe with an unpronounceable name—I won’t even try to spell it. I presume that you have gone along with him.
    Take care, Meto.
    Given your movements, I have no way of knowing if my letter of a month ago has reached you, or will reach you after this one, or will ever reach you at all, but since one of Caesar’s message bearers (a youngsoldier who has